In my role as the Sciences and Sustainability Librarian at San Diego State University (SDSU), I have been looking for ways to forge partnerships and collaborations in my community to support engagement and resilience. This community includes our students, faculty, and staff, as well as the broader community. As the liaison librarian to several STEM departments, my goal is to better support my community with their information needs, as well as engaging the broader community in accessible STEM content, while supporting the sustainability goals of the library. As such, I developed a series of Citizen Science workshops with direction from SciStarter for Citizen Science and Earth Month (April) in 2024, as well as input from our students and faculty. Through this programming I have come to understand how academic libraries can play a crucial role in empowering communities through citizen science.
Why is Citizen Science Important in our Library?
As we know, citizen science, also known as community science, participatory science, or crowdsourcing, involves individuals contributing to real scientific research alongside professional scientists. It’s a collaborative effort that allows participants to make a tangible impact on scientific discoveries. As a STEM librarian, I recognized the potential of citizen science to connect with students, faculty, and the community in a meaningful way. By offering hands-on learning experiences, we could foster engagement, promote student success, and contribute to important research initiatives.
Citizen science aligns with our library’s strategic plan and sustainability goals, offering a valuable opportunity to engage students in STEM, build relationships with the community, and foster student success.
How We Implemented Our Programming
To successfully implement our citizen science programming, we focused on local projects that were relevant to our campus and community. We partnered with SciStarter to identify suitable projects and launched our program in April to coincide with Citizen Science Month and Earth Day. The projects we chose were related to work being carried out in the library by the STEM and health science librarians, or projects on campus. In addition, the projects we chose for the workshops were low-entry projects that required minimal resources, aside from time, as we did not have a budget for this. We developed a library resource guide, hosted workshops, and engaged with the community at local events. The workshops were held weekly during Citizen Science Month directly outside the library at our Farmer’s Market to benefit from the relatively high foot traffic. We used the materials provided by SciStarter that we adapted for our needs in our advertising (e.g. Figure 1), and focused on contributing to One Million Acts of Science.
Our Projects
We selected three projects that resonate with our library’s mission and the interests of our community:
All of Us Research Data Collection. This project aims to diversify health data to improve healthcare outcomes. We collaborated with the All of Us UCSD team to educate the community about the project and collect health information (Figure 2). The health and sciences librarians at SDSU have been trained in the All of Us Researcher workbench to support our community using this data, so this project ties into our library goals.
Litter Journal: To address the issue of litter, we used the Litter Journal project to collect data on plastic pollution on our campus and identify problem areas. The aim is to improve human health, promote habitat and animal conservation. This project was requested by the SDSU sustainability students specifically over their concern of plastic waste in and around campus. In the workshop we showed the participants how to download the app, and how to record the litter, and then educated them on the importance of disposing the litter responsibly after they had documented it.
iNaturalist and the City Nature Challenge 2024: San Diego County: We showed participants how to download iNaturalist, and encouraged them to use iNaturalist to record observations of nature to contribute to biodiversity research. This workshop was held directly before the San Diego City Nature Challenge over the Earth Day weekend, and the data collected fed directly into a campus biodiversity project – the San Diego State University Biodiversity Museum.
Results
Our citizen science program has been successful in engaging the community and generating valuable data. Our resource guide has had over 490 views, workshop attendance was 71 for All of Us data collection, with 5 participants contributing their data either on the day or in the following days, 27 for Litter Journal, and 84 for iNaturalist. The iNaturalist data contributed directly to the City Nature Challenge 2024: San Diego County that published 29,095 observations; 2,881 species, 145 rare/endangered/threatened species, 1,338 observers, and 1,147 identifiers!
Challenges
We did encounter some challenges in this programming, such as securing buy-in from library employees and students, and developing a culture of hands-on workshops such as these. To overcome the organizational buy-in, we marketed this as a pilot project. To overcome the other challenges, we will market our program much earlier, and will include more forms of communication, such as social media, blog posts, and emails.
An additional challenge was finding suitable projects, and faculty willing to work with us to promote data collection for them. However, as we realized for Litter Journal, the project doesn’t have to be related to local research necessarily, but something that the community is passionate about. For Litter Journal, the students were concerned about their plastic waste.
Opportunities
Opportunities that we identified included providing education to all students with diverse backgrounds and study interests, as well as our community, about what citizen science is and why it is important. One of the students said “this is so cool that I can participate in science and contribute to projects on campus as a business major!”
Additionally, since we started our involvement with SciStarter and citizen science programming we’ve found other ways to engage our campus in more national and global activities. This year, we will be partnering with All of Us again on a broader scale, and we are preparing to join the Leave No Trace #LeaveNotTrash campaign in April 2025.
Next Steps
Moving forward, we plan to expand our program by collaborating with faculty on new projects, offering more workshops, and participating in future City Nature Challenges. We will also continue to assess the effectiveness of our program and make improvements based on feedback.
Citizen science and Citizen Science Month offers a unique opportunity for academic libraries to connect with their communities, promote scientific literacy, and inspire people to contribute to important research initiatives. By providing these hands-on learning experiences and fostering collaboration, we can empower individuals to make a positive impact on the world.
